Certain metrology systems such as coordinate measurement systems (CMM's) can be utilized to obtain precise measurements of inspected workpieces and may be controlled at least in part by workpiece feature inspection operations that have been programmed on a computer. One exemplary prior art CMM is described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,438,746, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. As described in the '746 patent, the CMM includes a probe for measuring a workpiece, a movement mechanism for moving the probe, and a controller for controlling the movement mechanism.
A CMM which includes the service scanning probe is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,652,275 (the '275 patent), which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. After a scan, a three dimensional profile of the workpiece is provided. In one type of scanning probe, the workpiece is measured by a mechanical contact probe (e.g. a precise miniature ball) scanning along the workpiece surface.
Some CMM's use an optical probe which scans a workpiece without making physical contact with the surface. Optical probes may be of a type may use points of light for detecting surface points (such as triangulation probes), or a type that uses a video camera, wherein the coordinates of geometric elements of the workpiece are determined via image processing software.
A “combined” coordinate measuring machine that uses both optical and mechanical measuring is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,908,951, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
In all of the above described CMMs, operations may be programmed for inspecting workpiece features. For example, a measurement path may be programmed for the motion of the measurement probe during the inspection operations. However, the programming of such measurement paths and other inspection operations in existing systems is typically relatively inefficient. Some known programming methods are flexible but require labor-intensive individual inspection point adjustments by a user. Other known programming methods may use complex algorithms to automatically determine many inspection point operations, but such programming methods typically provide either limited, or complicated, methods to make adjustments to improperly programmed or undesired operations that were determined automatically. A need exists for a system and method which allow intuitive, efficient, flexible and robust programming of workpiece feature inspection operations such as for a touch probe measurement path for a coordinate measuring machine. Especially, a method is needed which is fast, efficient, flexible and understandable by relatively unskilled users.